The Gnostic Gospels (9 page)

That they “disagree on specific matters, even from their own founders” meant to Tertullian that they were “unfaithful” to apostolic tradition. Diversity of teaching was the very mark of heresy:

On what grounds are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, if it is not from the difference of their teaching, which each individual of his own mere will has either advanced or received?
⁹¹

Doctrinal conformity defined the orthodox faith. Bishop Irenaeus declares that the catholic church

believes these points of doctrine just as if she had only one soul, and one and the same heart, and she proclaims them and teaches them in perfect harmony.… For although the languages of the world are different, still the meaning of the tradition is one and the same. For the churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the east, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Africa, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world.
⁹²

What would happen if arguments did arise among such scattered churches? Who should decide which traditions would take priority? Irenaeus considers the question:

But how is it? Suppose a dispute concerning some important question arises among us; should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches, with which the apostles held continual intercourse, and learn from them what is clear and certain in regard to the present question?
⁹³

Irenaeus prescribes terminating any disagreement

by indicating that tradition, derived-from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul … and by indicating the faith … which came down to our time by means of the succession of the bishops. For it is necessary that every church should agree with this church, on account of its preeminent authority.
⁹⁴

Since no one of later generations can have access to Christ as the apostles did, during his lifetime and at his resurrection, every believer must look to the church at Rome, which they founded, and to the bishops for authority.

Some gnostic Christians counterattacked. The
Apocalypse of Peter
, probably among the latest writings discovered at Nag Hammadi (c. 200–300), tells how dismayed Peter was to hear
that many believers “will fall into an erroneous name” and “will be ruled heretically.”
⁹⁵
The risen Christ explains to Peter that those who “name themselves bishop, and also deacon, as if they had received their authority from God,” are, in reality, “waterless canals.”
⁹⁶
Although they “do not understand mystery,” they “boast that the mystery of truth belongs to them alone.”
⁹⁷
The author accuses them of having misinterpreted the apostles’ teaching, and thus having set up an “imitation church” in place of the true Christian “brotherhood.”
⁹⁸
Other gnostics, including the followers of Valentinus, did not challenge the bishop’s right to teach the common apostolic tradition. Nor did they oppose, in principle, the leadership of priests and bishops. But for them the church’s teaching, and the church officials, could never hold the ultimate authority which orthodox Christians accorded them.
⁹⁹
All who had received
gnosis
, they say, had gone beyond the church’s teaching and had transcended the authority of its hierarchy.

The controversy over resurrection, then, proved critical in shaping the Christian movement into an institutional religion. All Christians agreed in principle that only Christ himself—or God—can be the ultimate source of spiritual authority. But the immediate question, of course, was the practical one: Who, in the present, administers that authority?

Valentinus and his followers answered: Whoever comes into direct, personal contact with the “living One.” They argued that only one’s own experience offers the ultimate criterion of truth, taking precedence over all secondhand testimony and all tradition—even gnostic tradition! They celebrated every form of creative invention as evidence that a person has become spiritually alive. On this theory, the structure of authority can never be fixed into an institutional framework: it must remain spontaneous, charismatic, and open.

Those who rejected this theory argued that all future generations of Christians must trust the apostles’ testimony—even more than their own experience. For, as Tertullian admitted,
whoever judges in terms of ordinary historical experience would find the claim that a man physically returned from the grave to be incredible. What can never be proven or verified in the present, Tertullian says, “must be believed, because it is absurd.” Since the death of the apostles, believers must accept the word of the priests and bishops, who have claimed, from the second century, to be their only legitimate heirs.

Recognizing the political implications of the doctrine of resurrection does not account for its extraordinary impact on the religious experience of Christians. Whoever doubts that impact has only to recall any of the paintings it evoked from artists as diverse as Della Francesca, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Dali, or the music written on the theme by composers from ancient times through Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Mahler.

The conviction that a man who died came back to life is, of course, a paradox. But that paradox may contain the secret of its powerful appeal, for while it contradicts our own historical experience, it speaks the language of human emotions. It addresses itself to that which may be our deepest fear, and expresses our longing to overcome death.

The contemporary theologian Jürgen Moltmann suggests that the orthodox view of resurrection also expressed, in symbolic language, the conviction that human life is inseparable from bodily experience: even if a man comes back to life from the dead, he must come back
physically
.
¹⁰⁰
Irenaeus and Tertullian both emphasize that the anticipation of bodily resurrection requires believers to take seriously the ethical implications of their own actions. Certainly it is true that gnostics who ridiculed the idea of bodily resurrection frequently devalued the body, and considered its actions (sexual acts, for example) unimportant to the “spiritual” person. According to the
Gospel of Thomas
, for example, Jesus says,

“If spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth [the spirit] has made its home in this poverty [the body].”
¹⁰¹

For the gnostics stood close to the Greek philosophic tradition (and, for that matter, to Hindu and Buddhist tradition) that regards the human spirit as residing “in” a body—as if the actual person were some sort of disembodied being who uses the body as an instrument but does not identify with it. Those who agree with Moltmann may find, then, that the orthodox doctrine of resurrection, far from negating bodily experience, affirmed it as the central fact of human life.

But in terms of the social order, as we have seen, the orthodox teaching on resurrection had a different effect: it legitimized a hierarchy of persons through whose authority all others must approach God. Gnostic teaching, as Irenaeus and Tertullian realized, was potentially subversive of this order: it claimed to offer to every initiate direct access to God of which the priests and bishops themselves might be ignorant.
¹⁰²

II

“One God, One Bishop”: The Politics of Monotheism

T
HE
C
HRISTIAN CREED
begins with the words “I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” Some scholars suggest that this credal statement was originally formulated to exclude followers of the heretic Marcion (c. 140) from orthodox churches. A Christian from Asia Minor, Marcion was struck by what he saw as the contrast between the creator-God of the Old Testament, who demands justice and punishes every violation of his law, and the Father whom Jesus proclaims—the New Testament God of forgiveness and love. Why, he asked, would a God who is “almighty”—all-powerful—create a world that includes suffering, pain, disease—even mosquitoes and scorpions? Marcion concluded that these must be two different Gods. The majority of Christians early condemned this view as dualistic, and identified themselves as orthodox by confessing one God, who is both “Father Almighty” and “Maker of heaven and earth,”

When advocates of orthodoxy confronted another challenge—the gnostics—they often attacked them as “Marcionites” and
“dualists.” Irenaeus states as his major complaint against the gnostics that they, like the Marcionites, say that “there is another God besides the creator.” Some of the recently discovered texts confirm his account. According to the
Hypostasis of the Archons
, the creator’s vain claim
¹
to hold an exclusive monopoly on divine power shows that he

is blind … [because of his] power and his ignorance [and his] arrogance he said …, “It is I who am God; there is none [other apart from me].” When he said this, he sinned against [the Entirety]. And a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power, saying, “You are mistaken, Samael,” which means, “god of the blind.”
²

Another text discovered in the same codex at Nag Hammadi,
On the Origin of the World
, tells a variant of the same story:

 … he boasted continually, saying to (the angels) … “I am God, and no other one exists except me.” But when he said these things, he sinned against all of the immortal ones … when Faith saw the impiety of the chief ruler, she was angry.… she said, “You err, Samael (i.e., “blind god”). An enlightened, immortal humanity [
anthropos
] exists before you!”
³

A third text bound into the same volume, the
Secret Book of John
, relates how

in his madness … he said, “I am God, and there is no other God beside me,” for he is ignorant of … the place from which he had come.… And when he saw the creation which surrounds him and the multitudes of angels around him which had come forth from him, he said to them, “I am a jealous God, and there is no other God beside me.” But by announcing this he indicated to the angels that another God does exist; for if there were no other one, of whom would he be jealous?
⁴

When these same sources tell the story of the Garden of Eden, they characterize this God as the jealous master, whose
tyranny the serpent (often, in ancient times, a symbol of divine wisdom) taught Adam and Eve to resist:

 … God gave [a command] to Adam, “From every [tree] you may eat, [but] from the tree which is in the midst of Paradise do not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” But the serpent was wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise, and he persuaded Eve, saying, “On the day when you eat from the tree which is in the midst of Paradise, the eyes of your mind will be opened.” And Eve obeyed … she ate; she also gave to her husband.
⁵

Observing that the serpent’s promise came true—their eyes were opened—but that God’s threat of immediate death did not, the gnostic author goes on to quote God’s words from Genesis 3:22, adding editorial comment:

… “Behold, Adam has become like one of us, knowing evil and good.” Then he said, “Let us cast him out of Paradise, lest he take from the tree of life, and live forever.” But of what sort is this God? First [he] envied Adam that he should eat from the tree of knowledge.… Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious envier.
⁶

As the American scholar Birger Pearson points out, the author uses an Aramaic pun to equate the serpent with the Instructor (“serpent,”
“to instruct,”
).
⁷
Other gnostic accounts add a four-way pun that includes Eve (
awāh): instead of tempting Adam, she gives life to him and instructs him: